Manley Lopez Bata Video

A musical transcription and analysis of an itotele phrase played by Abdel, taken from a bata video posted by Manley "Piri" Lopez on Instagram

Introduction

Here is the instagram account for Manley "Piri" Lopez: https://www.instagram.com/manleylopez/

And here is the link to the specific video which I'm discussing: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_-UTaygn-u/

Manley says this about the video:
Tambor tiempo España, España moderna y contemporáneo. Akpwon Fredy Betancourt, Itótele Abdel, Okónkolo @nereogonzalez 27/Feb/2019

Let me explain this for those that cannot understand:
Tambor= the type of religious drumming ceremony that is being filmed
tiempo España= (spanish time) referring to a slower tempo, or an older style of playing
moderna y contemporáneo= modern and contemporary
akpwon= the lead singer in this ensemble
Itótele, Onkónkolo=the names of the 2 drums in this video (this is explained later)
Fredy Betancourt, Abdel, @nereogonzalez= these are the names of individuals in the video
27/Feb/2019= presumably the date that this was filmed


Manley is an incredible, legendary, musician, as is everyone else in the video. We are going to focus on the Itótele player, named Abdel, but will not delve in to the details and background of this genre of music.

Watch the video in full

First, watch the full video. It's amazing. I've watched this 10 minute video many times in the few years since it was posted. If you don't know anything about this music it may be difficult to parse what is going on, but just try to hang on for the musical journey that these amazing people take you on. The drumming in this video is representative of a level of playing that few humans are capable of.

You might have noticed that there is some latency and/or sync issues with this particular video, which was clearly shot on some type of cell phone. Using Logic Pro X, I went through the whole video and made several minor edits to the audio so that it is better aligned to the video.

Here is that edited version:

Which drum is which?

The Itótele sits on the left side of the Iya player (stage left). The camera only occasionally pans far enough so that we can see him. To be clear, here are the 3 drums (and drummers):

Onkónkolo: (Nereo Gonzalez)	Iya: (Manley Lopez)	Itótele: (Abdel)

Here is a straight on image of some bata drummers sitting the standard configuration:

Understanding improvisation in ñongo

For the majority of this video, the ensemble is playing a rhythm known as "ñongo". When ñongo is being played, the itótele and iya players will often improvise calls and responses to help drive the excitement of the music. The iya player will often build a rhythmic phrase to 'call' and the itotele player will try to 'answer' with an improvised phrase either in the spaces that are left by the iya player, or after the iya has finished it's phrase.

As you can see from the video, the bata drums have 2 drumheads that are played each by the 2 hands of the drummers. The larger head on each drum is called the "enu" and the smaller head is the "cha". In ñongo, the iya player can improvise with both the enu and the cha sides of their drum. The itótele player may only improvise with the enu side of the drum, and the cha side must continue the pattern. The onkónkolo does not improvise at all (or at least not very much). Please keep in mind that the itótele player may not improvise with the cha side of their drum and must keep the pattern. This becomes very important for understanding and appreciating the complexity of the music.

Here is an image of a left-handed drummer playing the Iya. He is playing the cha side of the drum with his left hand, and the enu side of the drum with his right hand.

The 'moment'

At approximately 5'23" into the video, there is a longer answer phrase played by Abdel, the Itótele player. Here is the isolated audio clip of the moment:

This phrase has intrigued me for years, and I wonder, "How can someone just improvise something like this?" The cha side of the itotele is tasked with playing the middle triplet of every beat, which is not easy to do. To maintain that responsibility of keeping the cha pattern steady and then lay this complex rhythm from the enu on top of it is just mind blowing.

I eventually was able to determine how this was accomplished in a very round-about way. I believe what I present here is a more straightforward approach to accomplishing this type of passage.

Transcription

First, I slowed the excerpt down and marked every beat so I could align it to a grid inside Logic Pro. I used the beat mapping function to capture the subtle variations in tempo throughout the excerpt.
(I've added +2 bars of click before the beginning of the excerpt)

Here is the example slowed down and aligned with a click track:


Next, I manually entered a midi note for each note played by the enu side of the itótele. I'm ignoring the difference between the 2 tones (muffled tones and open tones) used by the player in this moment so that I can focus on the rhythm. I assigned these midi notes to a digital snare drum sound so that I could clearly hear the rhythm against the beat. I also added clave for clarity. (clave helps to orient us in this style of music)



Here is the synthesized audio, without any of the audio from the video. Isolating my transcribed notes so I could clearly hear the relationship between the itótele enu and the beat.


For most people (including myself), this is still difficult to parse. So I then slowed it down so you can more clearly hear what is happening. Here is the excerpt slowed down more than 50%, but instead of using clave, I am using the cha part of the itotele. So there are now only 3 sounds: 1.) the beat, 2.) the cha part of the itotele (the middle triplet) and 3.) the answer phrase from the enu of the itotele:


The next step is to analyze what subdivision can reasonably accomodate this phrase. As it turns out, it's actually not all that complicated. There are only 2 different subdivisions being used. If we consider the excerpt to be in 4/4, that would be a 16th note subdivision, and a 16th note triplet subdivision. Neither of these are especially uncommon or difficult at this tempo.

Here is the excerpt (still slow) with the underlying subdivision playing beneath the phrase.

Checking my work

Now that I have what I believe to be a correct understanding of the rhythms that are being played, I can check my work by using the quantize function in Logic Pro. Quantizing is a function used to digitally align the timing of MIDI notes to the fixed time grid in the software. If the quantized notes sound good, then we know that my understanding of the rhythms is somewhat accurate

In this example (still slowed down), there is the quantized sound played against the un-quantized sound. You should be able to hear that there is some small inconsistency but it is mostly well-aligned:

I then took the tempo back up to the original and checked to see that the quantized midi still sounded correct with the original audio of the video. As you can hear from this audio, there is some slight misalignment still noticeable but for the most part it isc well-aligned:


And here is a 35 second excerpt with the click and the quantized digital SD marking the itotele notes. (+2 bars of click and clave up front to orient us properly)


Even though there are some imperfections in this transcription, I'm very comfortable with the result. There still has to be some wiggle room for the musicians to express themselves and bend the time expressively. If the goal is to understand how to accomplish this passage, we are well on our way to accomplishing that goal.

Notating the passage

In order to visualize what is happening in the music, I opted for 2 means of notating the passage; with graph paper and western notation.

For the transcription on graph paper, it is necessary to find the common denominator for the 2 subdivisions. The passage uses 16th notes which divide each beat into 4 parts and 16th note triplets (or sextuplets) which divide each beat into 6 parts. We can use a subdivision of 12 to display both of these subdivisions (12/4=3 parts and 12/6=2 parts).

On the graph, the long lines with dots at the ends represent the beats of the measure. They are separated by 12 spaces, which is the most discrete subdivision necessary. I used some smaller lines to help me visualize the 2 subdivisions. I have horizontal lines that divide the beat 3 groups of 4 (visualizing the triplet) and 6 groups of 2 (visualizing the sextuplet). I also use a division lines across the top to show 4 groups of 3 (visualizing the 16th notes) when it is applicable. The green squares are the enu (the itótele players right hand). The red squares are the cha (the itótele players left hand). This graph illustrates that the 2 subdivisions can coexist by imposing a closely related higher subdivision, which means that this passage is possible to be played by human hands.


I have also notated the passage using plain old western notation. I opted to use a time signature of 12/8 instead of 4/4 - which means that the 16th note subdivision will be represented by a dotted sixteenth note in this case. This makes it possible to show how the left hand and right hand part are related. If it were to be in 4/4, the excerpt would contain a triplet eighth note on top of a non-triplet sixteenth note, which is far less illuminating of what is going on at a technical level.

I also have provided the basic itótele part for ñongo at the top of the page.
ManleyPiriLopez-Transcription.pdf (pdf opens in new window)

As you can see, it is very complicated, but it is not impossible. And there is a way to learn how to improvise with this type of content

Learning to play the material

At the beginning of this, I mentioned that I learned how to understand this in a round-about way, and not the way in which I have presented it. As it turns out, all of the individual elements that make up the phrase I am transcribing can be found throughout the repertoire of the bata drums. If one can thoroughly learn the repertoire from a master drummer, they will be well equipped to understand and perform such a passage.

However, you can also practice the individual pieces in order to make yourself a fluid improvisor in this style. I have written a sheet of exercises for the itótele here that cover all of the pieces in this video. The sheet progress in difficulty but it covers all of the basics necessary for this style.

Itotele.pdf (pdf opens in new window)

If you thoroughly practice all of the exercises in this pdf, you will build the technique you would need to improvise phrases in the same way that Abdel, the itotele player is doing in this video

Thank you so much for your time and attention.
-Robert Woods-LaDue